The distinction, as I see it, is that Hispanic is an ethnicity rather than a racial group identifier.
If you live in Florida and you speak Spanish at home, watch the evening news in Spanish, subscribe to the Spanish language newspaper, are in a Spanish speaking social group, etc… then for practical purposes you are Hispanic. Doesn’t matter if mom and/or dad were Hispanic. It’s not a racial thing.
In her case, it stretches credulity because she has no actual documentation that she has any Native American ancestry. She would not be perceived by an average person as being Native American, and she has no cultural ties to people who are, authentically, Native American.
I would say that about anyone who claimed any ethnicity, whether Black, White, Italian, German, Turkish or Native American. Rather, I would ask: What evidence do you have that you ARE that ethnicity? If none is available, then it’s an interesting story, not a fact.
When I say “it stretched credulity”, that is not the same as saying “she is not Native American”. It just means that, given the facts at hand, one cannot conclude that she is and claiming otherwise, well, stretches credulity.
If you want to talk about Obama, we can look at his birth certificate (long or short form) and see his father’s race listed as “African”. One needn’t stretch credulity to conclude that someone whose father is black, and who is perceived as black, actually is black. And since he isn’t disputing that observation, there is no credulity to be stretched in the first place.
You cannot find a claim to be incredulous without also believing the claim is not true. Stretching credulity means you think it is likely to be untrue. It is not the neutral statement you are claiming.
The problem is, there almost never is documentation for these situations. But lack of documentation doesn’t mean they don’t happen. If the rule were that I needed to be 1/64 to be considered Native American, I would have checked that box, too, despite having not a single bit of documentation.
It stretches incredulity to think you didn’t mean to imply she was either lying or ignorant. Not that you just were claiming that she didn’t have proof.
I do agree these aren’t the same thing, though. But the idea that Bush benefited from claiming to be Hispanic is just as ridiculous as the idea that Warren benefited from claiming to be Native American. We had the same level of documentation for both, and actually counter-documentation for the claim about Warren.
That’s the point we were making, from the get go. If you don’t disagree with that, then what was the point of bringing up that political talking point?
Cite?
Not quite as much as yet another of your attempts to show “both sides do it”.
This from your very first post in the thread.
If anyone ever mentions how the dope tends to beat the everloving shit out of even the most mundane of topics I’ll agree by linking to this one.
Apparently you think you have a point. Unfortunately it’s not clear to us lesser beings.
You don’t have it quite right. It’s the evidence provided that matters. If the evidence is scant, then there is no reason to accept the claim as true. That is not the same as claiming it is false. It’s not up to me to prove it wrong, it’s up to the claimant to prove it’s true. Until that happens, I am going to remain agnostic and say that you need better evidence if you want you claim to be credulous.
This thread is really supposed to be about Bush, but according to Snopes ‘claims of Native American heritage to gain an edge over other candidates for a job at Harvard’ are ‘Unproven’:
John is right, though, that these two situations aren’t alike. Bush made a mistake on a form and never has claimed to be Hispanic (though, frankly, he’s got better justification for that than Elizabeth Warren does to Native American, since at a minimum he actually has a Hispanic wife and kids and speaks the language fluently and has lived in a Hispanic country for several years…I seriously doubt Liz has lived on a Native American Pueblo for several years or speaks any Native American language fluently, but if she does then I’m willing to be educated about that).
It strains credulity that you don’t understand what his point was.
Sorry I made a dumb throwaway joke and didn’t think it through. It falls apart on analysis. Warren’s and Bush’s situations are different.
I was intending to make the implication that right-wingers actually care about Warren’s claim, while left-wingers won’t care about Bush’, but nobody should care much about either of them. I failed hard.
Nicely put. But did you read post #2 in this thread? 
Still, your point is well taken that this is unlikely to be brought up by “left wingers” of any import during the campaign, should Bush get the nomination.
Credible, not credulous and it’s still not the right word. Something that’s credible is just capable of being true, but doesn’t have to be.
There may not be proof that Warren is native american but, given her known history, that her ancestry may contain native americans is entirely plausible. Do you also go around interrogating people with Kiss Me, I’m Irish shirts on St. Patrick’s Day demanding proof of their heritage?
Go to a St. Patrick’s Day Parade, how many there speak Gaelic?
Great minds think alike. Twisted minds as well, it would seem.
The “Kiss me, I’m Irish” people do not use the claim of Irish ancestry to get any tangible benefit (such as Irish citizenship, for example). And if they do, that claim is examined and more proof than a t-shirt is required.
Jeb Bush marked the checkbox on a form that is not used for anything other than general statistics and has not derived or intended to derive any benefit from it. That’s the difference from Warren’s claim.
Apart from this, is “Hispanic” a cultural or a racial designation? Because if it is cultural, then Jeb is, in fact, Hispanic.
How many people who live in Ireland do you suppose speak Gaelic? Most of the people who I know who live on Native American pueblos (which is quite a few) speak at least some of their tribes language, however, so I don’t think it’s that much of a stretch.
However, my main point was that the two situations aren’t alike. Bush isn’t claiming to be Hispanic, while Warren does claim to have Native American ancestry. Bush’s claim to not being Hispanic could be wrong, of course, and Liz claim could be correct (seems like a simple DNA test would work…I had one done a year or so ago and it was a hell of a lot of fun and eye opening as well, and wasn’t that expensive), but regardless they aren’t alike. Except as a talking point endlessly beat to death in threads such as this one to prove that the other side is or would be really bad and completely different than ones own side. Or something.
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Apart from this, is “Hispanic” a cultural or a racial designation? Because if it is cultural, then Jeb is, in fact, Hispanic.
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It’s both, and regardless he’s not Hispanic, and he’s been pretty clear that he doesn’t claim to be either.
OK. I guess.
Which I already noted, upthread.
Depends on how hot she is. 
Yet another statement that strains credulity. Or is that credibility?
I am not talking about claims. I am saying culturally (in speaking the language fluently, being steeped in the culture, and having lived in Mexico) he is Hispanic. In fact he is quite a bit more Hispanic, culturally, than some people I know of Mexican ancestry who don’t speak Spanish and don’t know much about the Hispanic culture.